That time when I accidentally social engineered myself to a film set (opens in new tab)

They loved it and kept the shot, but then realized- whoever this was, she now had a spoken part in the film! They had to find her, get her to join the actors guild, and then pay her some minimum amount for having a line in the film.

I'm sure someone will reply now with the correct version of this story, the woman's name, which Star Trek film it was, and a link to proof of this all.

What the subtext says to me is that the assistant director, or whoever OP talked to, was well aware that OP was just some rando passing through, (probably through experience working in cities), and not a unionized member of SAG. The “nice work” comment was an opportunity for OP to say, ‘uh huh’ and float the director enough plausible deniability to salvage the shot. As soon as he said, “no”, it’s cut and reshoot. Probably not a big deal, but worth a shot (pun intended) from the director.

My neighbour was out of town, off vacationing with their family. They had a large family with several kids, so they had a good 2 or 3 cars parked around the front of their home.

The film crew had mandated that all cars needed to be cleared from the set. So absolutely no cars on the street. They went around asking people to move all their cars down to the school parking lot a couple blocks away. My neighbours weren't home to hear this or even be notified.

The set director (I think that must be who they were cause they yelled a lot at everyone) was cursing at my neighbour's home, waving hands angrily, and called a tow truck to move all of the neighbour's cars. A person came to ask if we knew where they were or had their contact number. We told them they were out of town.

They did not move the cars back. School re-opened after the long weekend, neighbour got fined for parking tickets down at the school. Came back home to missing vehicles, called the cops, freaked out, eventually found their cars down at the school, had to pay over $500 in parking fines, one of their cars had even been towed down to the impound lot for improper parking on a private space.

It was a gigantic mess. Doubt the film crew cares, they were long gone and probably not even in the country by the time my neighbour was capable of filing a grievance with them.

I have some empathy to the film crew, but while I'm all about practical effects in some ways, the city neighbourhoods should be CGId ASAP. This isn't a tiny-non-issue. Think about all the movies and shows on all the networks on all the streaming services. The 37 seasons of NCIS and 32 seasons of Law & Order and ten million episodes of all the crappy shows - every how many scenes in all of them closing down some neighbourhood somewhere for the shot of actor walking down the street.

However, it's really the city's responsibility to notify everyone, unless otherwise negotiated; when film crews do all that it's generally a courtesy thing. Sometimes the crew wants to do that in advance but the city will ding them for taking the initiative.

Film shoots are a big kickback to the police department. Hiring cops for security is required contractually and it's a sweet assignment because overtime is inevitable. Those jobs go to cops who are close to retirement because pensions are usually calculated as a % of final 2 years' pay. Smart crews also hire or plan their own security because the cops just show up to eat and flirt with the actresses and can't be relied on to watch gear.

Location scouts get paid the big bucks to not only know where to shot but how and to grease all the appropriate wheels.

I live in a turn of the century neighborhood with a lot of craftsman bungalows, four squares, victorians, etc. So there's usually a couple smaller film productions every summer.

They're generally quite considerate. If they're doing an exterior shot they'll only block people going through for the brief moment they're actually filming. They're organized and tidy other than yes there's gonna be a ton of generator cables running around. Knitting seems to be the big hobby for staff waiting for the next shot.

I talked with the owner of the convenience store about this stuff one time. Some production was shooting across the corner and liked the look of his store and wanted to use it as a backdrop for a few things. So they worked out a simple deal where they'd repaint his entire exterior in trade for the rights to film. He was totally happy with the situation and said they didn't really disrupt his business.

I wonder what ends up making the difference?

My guess would be that you're interpreting the comment as, "Please don't accidentally wander onto a film set out of ignorance," whereas my interpretation (and perhaps that of those who have voted for it) of the comment was, "Please don't be inspired by this to seek out and actively trespass on a closed film set."

They're two slightly different things.

Why not instead be considerate and respectful for others' work by not ruining it? Road workers don't always have perfect boundaries and yet I hope you don't just go step into their paint while reciting your constitutional rights. This is the same thing without the paint.

But as someone who lives in Los Angeles and sees this all the time — and has many friends who work on sets — you absolutely should not do this. Sets almost always “look like they’re open.” That doesn’t mean they are, it’s because there’s a-million-and-one things being done on the set by _skilled_ people who are being paid near minimum wage, working late, getting yelled at, and skipping meals and still can’t get everything that needs to be done done (Hollywood is lucrative once you get above the ground floor, but those early levels are brutal in every part of the industry).

How would you feel if someone just came and sat next to you working on a PR in a coffee shop and kept asking questions about everything you were doing? Now imagine you were as exhausted as the people on set, and there were dozens of people asking you the same question. Because this happens all the time here in Los Angeles.

Again, totally agree what they do is interesting! But they’re not doing it for you, and they’re in the middle of working.

Do you walk into the middle of a construction site when a crew is working because you’re interested in that process, too?

Is not by itself justification to do a thing.

This shouldn't be true but, sadly, it probably is. Many "Making of"-type docs and featurettes used to actually show interesting things about how the film was made. As someone with extensive experience in video and film production, I always found these fascinating. In fact, seeing some of these as a kid strongly influenced the fact I worked in the technical end of production.

However, for at least the past decade, outside of a few trade-specific publications, the vast majority of such docus feature very little that's not obvious about how something was made. These things now focus almost exclusively on celebrity actors because they have the broadest appeal to the mass market public and such docus are funded by the distributing studio's marketing dept.

The rare exceptions are some massive-budget, effects heavy, blockbusters which already have huge fandoms where the marketers have enough budget and perceived interest to fund the creation of real behind-the-scenes, making-of content. A good example is some of content released around The Lord of the Rings trilogy which actually focused on individual aspects of production not directly involving the actors.

As someone with a lot of production experience, I should add that I disagree with the idea that "just walking onto a set and watching" is a good way to learn anything - or even very interesting. I have a tween who was fascinated by movie production, until I actually took her to some movie sets where she got to experience just how slow and boring the process can be to watch. Hours of rigging, lighting and camera tests for two minutes of shooting, which you often can't clearly see from most places on the set other than directly behind the camera, and it's rare to be able to hear any significant dialog unless you're almost in the shot. Frankly, even I find visiting a set as an observer pretty boring (other than seeing old co-workers and friends), and I actually understand and like the arcane technical aspects of production like lens focal lengths, color temps, etc. I'd much rather watch a well-produced, insightful docu which shows the gear and setups being used edited together with through-the-camera results and narrated by the technical crew when they aren't busy actually working. Unfortunately, that kind of content is all-too-rare these days and most featurettes called "Making-of..." are 90% celebrity actor/director interviews focused on the marketing team's talking points about the film slapped over a little behind-the-scenes B-roll.

I have heard endless complaints from fellow devs about being overworked and burnt out.

I think it’s okay to point out when conditions are rough even if you’re getting paid to do the thing you wanted to do.

I'll usually ask if when I come back in 5 minutes or so if they'll be filming so that I don't disrupt them. Even if I'm super respectful, they usually wind up trying to stop me from getting back to my apartment when I return. It took me a while to figure out that I can just ignore them and keep walking.

Still, it was cool to see Oscar the grouch on my street.

I've walked through a lot of sets, and they really only care about keeping random people out when the cameras are actually rolling. The logistics of filming in a city simply don't work otherwise.

Is the author on HN? He mentions that they only managed to film 2 scenes. Is that right, or was it 2 scenes over and over and over and over and... I guess most action scenes are CGI these days, but when some gunfire+explosion scene is filming outside your office, where they do the same 20 second sequence 100 times, man that gets old real quick.

Best play it safe and pretend to be handing out coffees and snacks (or actually do it you're feeling kind)

So are most telemarketers (maybe not the "blue collar" part I guess). Doesn't make them not scum.